Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine in which practitioners treat patients using highly diluted preparations that causes the body to experience low level manifestations of the symptoms that it is trying to eliminate. In homeopathy, this is known as the “law of similars.” In a sense, it is not unlike the principle behind vaccination—where the vaccine triggers low level versions of the disease one is trying to prevent, thereby training the immune system to respond to the real disease state if and when it may arise. Homeopathic remedies do not have any direct effect on bacteria or viruses. However, it is believed that they modify the body's response to them by enabling the body's defense mechanism to better recognize certain pathogens to be fought off. Because of their long standing use in the United States, the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1938 declaring that homeopathic remedies are to be regulated by the FDA in the same manner as nonprescription, over-the-counter (OTC) drugs. Thus, homeopathic remedies are required to meet certain legal standards for strength, quality, purity, and packaging.
Homeopathic ingredients can be used to treat coughs, bronchitis, pneumonia, overall weakness, headache, and deep muscle ache, for example. Other remedies are used to treat diseases accompanied by a greenish-yellow discharge, and are prescribed for colds, sinusitis, coughs accompanied by thick phlegm, and can also help with thick nasal congestion. Still other homeopathic remedies made from onions are commonly used to relieve the symptoms of hay fever, nasal congestion, or similar complaints. Such remedies may be obtained from a pharmacy that carries a range of homeopathic medicines.
Traditional medicine (also known as indigenous medicine) comprises medical or medicinal knowledge systems that have developed over generations within various societies before the era of modern medicine. Practices known as traditional medicines include herbal, Ayurveda, Siddha medicine, Unani, ancient Iranian medicine, Islamic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, traditional Korean medicine, acupuncture, Muti, Ifá, traditional African medicine, and other medical knowledge and practices all over the globe. These and other knowledge systems are actively being studied in branches of science such as ethnopharmacology and ethnobotany. Although traditional medicine has no legal standing in the United States, it is nevertheless global in application, particularly in the Far East, where it has been estimated that up to 80% of the population continues to use these traditional methods to treat primary medical problems. In the past decade or so, research has been increasingly focused on scientific evaluation of traditional medicines and drugs of plant and herbal origin, including methods derived from indigenous or tribal populations. Thus, traditional medicines can include many well-known herbs and spices.
If a way could be found to use herbal and/or nutraceutical ingredients in combination with homeopathic ingredients, balanced in a synergistic manner to elicit complementary effects which both reduce the symptoms of colds and/or flus and provide the potential to reduce pathogenic loads in the body, this would represent a useful contribution to medical and nutritional science.